Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? (LN) - Volume 14 - Chapter 1.1

B1 Reminisce: First Meeting

The beginning of my romance with Sariel wasn’t terribly interesting.

No, I suppose it was a rather impactful encounter, enough that it might be interesting to some.

But I feel the need to state in advance that there was no romantic element present in our first meeting, just in case that is what anyone was interested in.

Unfortunately, it was not love at first sight, or any such flight of fancy.

My first meeting with Sariel was impactful in a very different way.

Not in a romantic sense, but rather, a more literal sort of impact.

A direct impact, if you will.

Since she knocked me to the ground the very first time we met.

Impactful, is it not?

The world before the system was implemented was a very different world entirely.

Its appearance, its inner workings, and everything in between.

Perhaps this is obvious, but without the system, there were no skills or stats.

This meant that people were weaker on the whole, but as there were no monsters or any such thing either, they did not need to be strong.

As they could not use magic, science developed instead; buildings were constructed tall enough to pierce the heavens, smooth and solid streets connected across the natural ground, and automobiles filled those streets to bursting.

If the people of those times could see how life is in this world today, I imagine they would think that time had gone backward.

With the help of skills, people whose knowledge still remains, and so on, we have not gone entirely backward, but I am sure such differences are only tangible to those of us who knew the time before, like Ariel, Dustin, and me.

No doubt Potimas pays no attention to such things.

Other than that, I suppose reincarnations might notice.

Before they were reborn here, it seems they lived on a planet with a fairly advanced civilization as well.

Perhaps some of them have also noticed the occasional remnants of the technologies we once had, which do not seem to fit with our current way of life.

The system was programmed to make books and other such recording mediums deteriorate faster to eliminate such things, but it cannot erase what has been handed down over generations by word of mouth and so on.

As if to prove that even a species as weak as humans can resist a powerful god like D…even in the tiniest of ways.

Although I doubt that was the humans’ intent. This is just wishful thinking on my part, I’m sure…

Ah, but I digress.

At any rate, things changed so drastically that one might doubt that this is the same world as before.

And it was not just the world that changed, but myself as well.

I was a prideful person at the time, though it may be strange to say so myself.

I firmly believed that humans were inferior creatures, and never doubted that for a second.

In my defense, I will clarify that the same could be said of all dragons.

I do not mean the monsters that are called such in this current world, but true dragons, such as myself.

We true dragons are a powerful species, promised that we can reach godhood from the moment we are born.

As a result, we tend to genuinely believe that dragons are a superior race, and all others are beneath us.

Now that I have encountered the ultra-powerful god known as D, I no longer believe this with such confidence, but at the time there was never a doubt in my mind.

Thus, it did not amuse me to see the inferior race of humans spreading across the world as if they owned the place.

Why did the top-ranking dragons not use their overwhelming might to subjugate these humans?

I did not understand.

For a dragon, I am still relatively young, but back then I was even younger.

I suppose you could call it the arrogance of youth.

So when a dragon child was kidnapped by a measly human, of all things, you can imagine that I was extremely displeased.

In those days, dragons kept to themselves in a small dominion.

Of the ruling dragons, many of them were dissatisfied with this way of life.

But for dragons, the rule of seniority is absolute.

If an elder dragon gives an order, younger dragons must obey it.

We suppressed our displeasure and obeyed the commands of the older dragons.

The years a dragon has lived directly correspond with their strength.

Unlike other creatures, the strength or weakness of a parent does not determine that of the child.

Which is why all elderly dragons were respected, and children were treasured and treated equally.

Dragons live so long that their average lifespan cannot be predicted, and individually strong dragons hardly ever have children.

Because it is such a rare occurrence, dragon children are raised with great care.

And stealing such a priceless treasure from us was bound to invoke incomparable wrath.

I had no personal connection to that child; we had never even met.

But even I felt my blood boiling.

So you can only imagine the parents’ rage.

It would have been no surprise if they went about destroying human villages indiscriminately, searching for their child.

Perhaps that is exactly why I, an unrelated individual, was assigned to keep watch over the child.

Observation only, not rescue.

According to the elder dragons, “As the child was stolen by man, it stands to reason that man must do the rescuing as well.”

Otherwise, there would be no more justification for dragons to tolerate humans.

Upon hearing this, my honest reaction was, “Is there really any need to tolerate them?”

At the time, I thought we should simply destroy a human town or two to set an example.

But I could not disobey the elder dragons’ orders.

Instead, I was to monitor the kidnapped child, as a safety net just in case any danger might befall them before humans could rescue them.

It was a criminal syndicate that had kidnapped the child.

Dragons are a skillful race. As soon as we realized the child had been kidnapped, we immediately found out the culprits.

Then we contacted the nation where those criminals were hiding and demanded that they rescue the child themselves.

Humans know how terrifying dragons can be.

And they know what it means to steal a child from dragons, too.

Back then, I thought of the kidnappers and the rescuers alike as mere humans of the same ilk, but in retrospect, the kidnappers must have been out of their minds.

Any human with the slightest good sense would know better than to kidnap a dragon child.

It was only because this group lacked any sense at all that they were able to resort to such madness.

The humans who kidnapped the dragon child were, simply put, idiots.

Which is why they were being used.

As I would learn much later, the mastermind behind this foolish kidnapping was none other than Potimas.

He was using the crime syndicate to research the transcendent race known as dragons.

He was even careful enough to put several other organizations and individuals between himself and the perpetrators, so that we would not identify him as the one behind it all.

That man knew perfectly well what happened to those who incurred the wrath of dragons.

Otherwise, he would not have taken such care to ensure that we wouldn’t find him.

It is hard to say whether this makes him bold for meddling with dragons, or a coward for taking such cautionary measures to hide from us.

Either way, because of this incident, he was able to get his hands on a bit of body tissue from a dragon: hair and scale fragments from the kidnapped child.

He used the tissue to create a chimera, but that is a story for another time.

I could not pardon the perpetrators, even if they were being used by Potimas.

That is what it means to lay a hand on a dragon.

Desperate to avoid being caught up in the consequences, the nation where the crime syndicate was hiding hurried to take countermeasures.

They had to recover the stolen child safely before anything terrible happened.

But if anything, I was hoping that the perpetrators would try to harm the child.

If they did, I would have good reason to blow them away, and this entire nation along with them.

I was ordered to keep watch in case any danger befell the child. If it looked like any harm might come to them, I was to protect the child by any means necessary.

If those conditions were met, I would be permitted to use force.

I excel in spatial conjuring and could easily teleport to the child’s side in an emergency.

Unless anything highly unusual occurred, I should have no problem getting there in time.

So rather than the incident ending peacefully, I hoped that I would have the chance to show these humans what would happen if they tried to harm a dragon.

That is how much irrational, pent-up anger was in my mind at the time.

And to add to that…

“Hey, buddy. Don’t you know this is our turf?”

This encounter only added fuel to my burning rage.

My mistake was choosing a dark, inconspicuous alley from which to keep watch.

Disguised as a human, all alone in such an alley, I must have looked like perfect prey to those ill-bred buffoons.

Soon I was surrounded by good-for-nothing human youngsters.

Groups like this seem to exist in any world, any era.

An inconvenience, though I did not think so at the time.

My hand moved before I could think.

My anger was already at its boiling point, and in those days, I did not distinguish between humans.

The ones who kidnapped the child, the ones attempting to recover them, and the ones who surrounded me at the time were all just “humans” to me.

And now those humans were threatening me.

I needed no further reason to attack them.

The young delinquents were probably only thinking to threaten me and steal my wallet and must not have imagined that I would suddenly try to kill them.

Certainly, they would never have dreamed that I was actually a dragon.

And before they could realize any of that, my fist was already swinging toward them, about to rip them to pieces faster than they could even realize they were dead.

But my fist never reached them.

Because someone grabbed my arm from behind before I could strike.

“…?!”

Instinctively, I tried to hit whoever had grabbed me with my free hand.

But they blocked my backhand chop, producing a shock wave.

It sent the delinquents flying, but I had no time to worry about that.

Because the shock wave knocked me off my feet as well.

For a moment, I didn’t understand what had happened. I simply found myself on the ground, looking up at the sky.

“Warning. I cannot permit physical interference with the native species.”

The person responsible looked down at me and spoke in a flat, mechanical voice with no audible trace of emotion.

“Hostile action detected from dragon toward native species. Such actions would conflict with the authorized mission. Further attempts will result in elimination.”

It was a merciless declaration.

The speaker knew I was a dragon yet stated that she would eliminate me if I took action.

And she was powerful enough to make good on those words.

This is the reason that dragons did not attempt to rule the world, even though they considered themselves a superior species.

Because there was an even stronger being that protected the native life.

Namely, the one they now call a goddess: Sariel.

During our first encounter, we immediately attacked each other, and I was knocked to the ground and informed that I would be eliminated.

That was my first meeting with Sariel.

See? Not romantic in the slightest, is it?